Social Media and Brexit : Social Network Analysis of Brexit Main Actors’ Facebook Fanpages

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

On 23 June 2016, after the referendum, the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. On 29 March 2017, British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered article 50 of Lisbon Treaty which initiated Brexit negotiation between the UK and the EU. Behind the leave camp, this paper considers the main contributors of Brexit would have approached the potential voters in a strategic manner. For finding out the mechanism, this paper focuses on the social media as one of the effective communication tools for these contributors and the leave camp. Based on the literature review, despite the significance and influence of Facebook, this paper considers social network analysis based on Facebook seemed to be neglected. For tackling this concern, this paper conducted a social network analysis featured by NodeXL—network analysis software—for finding out the co-comments networks of Brexit main actors’ Facebook fan pages. After the analysis, we found out a couple of findings: 1. among the main actors of Brexit, the campaign organisation of leave camp (Leave.EU) had more participants and denser connection among themselves comparing with other actors (Nigel Farage or UKIP); and, 2. the Leave Camp successfully approached potential voters by maintaining closer connection. These results indicate that Facebook was also one of the effective tools for the Leave Camp to approach its potential voters.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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